Using the WooCommerce Conversion Tracking Plugin to Drive Sales

As an eCommerce seller, you rely on tracking your customers’ shopping habits to know the best-sellers, how well coupons are performing, what items resonate among customers in certain demographics and so on.

Most of all, you’re interested in what drives your repeat customers to keep coming back and replicating that success across the board. This is where a conversion tracking plugin can help.

WooCommerce’s Conversion Tracking Plugin tracks all the codes generated by your advertising campaigns and puts them in customer shopping carts where you can retrieve them, even when a sale wasn’t finalized. It integrates with Google Ads, Facebook Marketplace, and Twitter ads, and offers a custom feature to track online leads from other channels. It sorts through data on each step of the purchase journey at each of these channels and provides a standardized report from all of them on:

Number of conversions

Cost per acquisition

Time spent on your store or the store on a particular channel

Customer tracking data on the number of visits to a website or store on a particular channel, page views, and time spent on pages and overall visits

Search data

Website bounce rate

Clicks to specific destination pages

Session duration data

A Pro version adds Bing Ads and lets you track all purchase-related events through Facebook’s product catalog and via Facebook pixel ID. Users also get access to Perfect Audience, a retargeting platform for mobile and virtually any online channel.

What a great way to do side-by-side comparisons of how the shopping experience in different places performs for your business!

Here are some steps you can take after reviewing this data to drive sales more efficiently.

Focus Your Early Efforts Where Your Ads Resonate Most

Some channels simply do better than others to reach your target shoppers. These are the places you should focus your analytics early on and look at their demographics as well as their shopping habits:

When do they shop? (day versus evenings, weekends?)

Did they use a coupon or respond to a sale ad?

Are any repeat customers from earlier campaigns?

Ideally, you want to wean customers off coupons. Coupons are usually meant to attract first-time shoppers or announce a special for a new product. They’re also a good way to sell out merchandise about to be discontinued or that you just want to clear out.

If you find a significant number of one-time customers who used coupons or repeat customers who only use coupons, you need to think about what encouraged them to buy in the first place and bring them back.

Offer a Newsletter for Loyal Customers (And You Get to Define “Loyal”)

Don’t think of a newsletter as an additional task as much as one that back-up your advertising efforts.

For starters, a newsletter reminds customers that your business is still out there. You can encourage to sign up by stressing a few pluses in their interests, such as they will receive advance notice about specials/sales or upcoming product launches. Reward those loyal customers with free two-day shipping for the rest of the year – it worked pretty well for Amazon, right?

You can also segment your customers to create more personalized emails. Those who have bought Product A might appreciate learning about a complementary product.

Loyal customers tend to care less about coupons and special sales. If they like your product or service, they’ll stick with it. (They do, however, appreciate the occasional coupon as much as the next person in line.)

Another way to encourage loyalty is to ask repeat customers to offer a review. Tell them you noticed that they are repeat customers and you’d be honored if they would share their experiences. People are flattered when they are noticed, and customers are no different.

Convert Browsers into Buyers

What about channels that get people’s attention but don’t generate enough sales?

First, look at where they’re browsing. If it’s your website, you have a lot of flexibility to make adjustments. If it’s Google Shopping or Facebook Marketplace, you’re a bit more constrained. Either way, you need to seal the deal with virtual window-shoppers.

Put your attention first where the results are a little more encouraging and it could be easier to gain a sale. A low bounce rate combined with more page views and time spent on the site means people really enjoy being there. So what’s the problem?

Revisit Your Product Descriptions and Photos or Graphics

Perhaps you need to beef up your product descriptions. Here are a couple of ideas to get you started:

Use your written content wisely. If you’re limited by space or characters, as on Google Shopping and Facebook’s Marketplace, think about your emphasis. Put the big points upfront like quality and unique features. What distinguishes you from the competition? You can do the same on your own site, perhaps by rearranging or rewriting content. Above all, use active content.

Use higher-quality, mobile-friendly photos. Make sure the photos you’re uploading on each channel are high quality and adhere to the site’s specifications on size. Use thumbnails where instructed, and provide really, really good photos on product pages (keeping in mind each site’s restrictions). At the same time, remember that most people are shopping via smartphone, so avoid photos or graphics with lots of intricate details. (Offer a zoom feature if you want to show details.) Positive shopping experiences on mobile can increase purchases by as much as 16%, according to Search Engine Journal.

Run Facebook and Google Campaigns Together

If you find that you’re doing pretty well on Facebook compared to Google, you might be able to boost your Google campaign by running it simultaneously with Facebook.

Search Engine Journal reported that running concurrent campaigns result in more Google purchases. While Facebook attracts a lot of click-to-buy (your stats probably agree), for many people, it’s a lead. In effect, Facebook provides a multiplier effect. These people do their research, with many turning to Google. Once a Google search confirms your product/service quality, the chances that they will buy can rise by as much as 23%.

Retarget Searches to Other Channels

Take a look at search data the plugin captures that took people to your website where they looked around for a while but didn’t bite. Where did they come from?

If they came from Google, it might be worth your while to try out the Pro version to get access to Bing Ads. Use those Google Ads on Bing, where you might be able to re-capture those same visitors.

Once you’ve used Bing for a while, you can retarget searches to Google, using BingAds terms.

Offer Guest Check Out

When possible, offer a guest check-out option. Obviously this isn’t an option on Facebook or Google Shopping but it is on your website.

With all the news about privacy breaches and more people switching to no-follow search engines like Duck Duck Go, you just can’t count on everyone being OK about opening an account on all platforms.

Do you have questions about WooCommerce as a platform or about specific plugins? Mode Effect’s articles can offer guidance, or contact us directly.